by M. R. Forbes
Mitchell didn't notice right away that the asteroids had cleared around him.
When he saw it, he wasn't quite sure he believed it was there, silent and massive and still and dark.
No, not dark.
Not dark at all.
Goliath.
It spread out in front of him, stretching the entire length of his vision. It was big. Bigger than he had imagined. Bigger than anything he had ever seen, save for the Federation dreadnought.
Big and ugly.
And already under alien control.
Veins spread around it in a liquid metallic shine, undulating across the surface, branching out from one to the other, connecting at points along the hull. A nervous system, Watson had called it. It lay over the heavy alloy of the lost starship and passed into and out of it in places, spearing the structure and cradling it as though it was the only thing holding it together. It may have been, too. The metal underneath was scarred and puckered, twisted and broken as though it had already been through a war, or more likely pelted with asteroids.
"This," Mitchell said, trying to contain his disappointment and disbelief. It didn't matter if the aliens had already taken it. "This is what was supposed to save us?" How? How could it? It was nothing more than a shell, a mangled piece of wreckage in worse shape than the Schism had ever been. It was old and useless, another human corpse.
"I..." Singh tried to find the words and failed. There were no words. In the aftermath of losing everything, there were no emotions. Or there were so many they were both overloaded. "What now?"
He didn't know. Was he supposed to? The Schism was gone. Millie was gone. Even the Alliance ships and General Cornelius were gone. The alien ship was outside the asteroid field, waiting. For them? For something else?
He kept the fighter moving towards the ship, deciding to go in for a closer look. Their odds of survival were small, but if they did manage to escape he wanted a good look at what they were up against.
"It's amazing," Singh said behind him, so quietly he barely heard her.
The truth was that the structure was amazing, the way it flowed across the hull like metallic vines, the way the energy coursed and pulsed along it. As they drew ever closer, he wondered if it had the capability to attack them. The original Goliath had no weapons, and he didn't see anything augmenting the ship beyond the veins.
He checked his HUD. The alien craft was moving closer, along with the Alliance carrier. He had forgotten about that ship. They were keeping it alive for now. The reason became clear the next time the sensors punched through the asteroids. Two squadrons of fighters had dumped from the carrier, along with a larger dropship.
They were coming in.
"We're going to have company," he said.
Singh didn't answer him.
"Singh, are you alive back there?"
"Yes. Mitchell, look."
They were nearly on top of the Goliath now, close enough that he could feel the charge of the pulses running across the hull. They were near the front, near the belly of the ship and rising up along the side. He didn't see anything.
"What is it?" he asked.
"There. To your left."
He turned his head, scanning along the side of the ship. He could see the veins looked more like bundled wires from here, so densely woven that they appeared unified from a distance. They rose two or three meters off the alloy plates, curving and diving back in. They were lashed to the hull with larger, denser splashes of the material, or in some cases vanished into the metal, disappearing inside a small spread that sealed the inside of the ship.
He saw it then. A spot of green light near the aft of the behemoth, growing larger and spilling further out into space with each passing breath.
A door.
It was opening.
"Is that good or bad?" Singh said.
Mitchell watched the heavy door. The Goliath had a hanger, a launch bay intended for future missions that it had never gotten the chance to go on. Were they about to be ambushed from two sides?
He checked his HUD. It was only updating every few seconds, and only a few of the fighters were marked inside the belt, the rest disguised by the interference. The dropship was sitting right outside, floating along the edge in sync with the smaller ships. They were searching. For him? Or for Goliath?
He eyed the hanger door. They had nothing to lose.
"Either good, or dead," he said, firing the thrusters and sending them skating along the side of the ship.
His p-rat beeped as the first of the fighters entered the opening in the field, appearing in his vision. He turned and vectored towards it, launching two of the discs as he swung away from Goliath and then flipped the fighter over to face back towards it, and the hanger.
The Moray vanished in a short, silent explosion, at the same time he rocketed towards the opening. The doors were only a third of the way to their fully retracted position, split in the center and moving at a snail's pace. He couldn't see much of the inside of the ship through the green glow of the lighting, but nothing was coming out at them and he took that as a good sign.
The p-rat beeped when the rest of the squadron appeared, eleven strong and coming on hard. They were only two seconds away from the hanger doors. Could the other pilots make the squeeze? Could he? He flipped the S-17 again, giving it some thrust to slow it down and letting it float backward towards the opening in the ship's hull. It was going to be close. Very close. He opened fire with everything he had, laying down cover while he made his escape. He only hit one of the enemy fighters, catching the edge of it, blowing it out from the side. It careened away and smashed against an asteroid.
The S-17 jostled as it passed through the gaping mouth of the hanger, the top of it smacking the top door, the shields bouncing it down and off the bottom. They were coming in fast, too fast. He fired the thrusters, watching the inside of the ship pass on either side of them, slowing at the force of the thrust but not slowing fast enough.
"Mitchell!" Singh shouted, the fear in her voice clear.
Mitchell gritted his teeth. He was at full thrust. There was nothing else he could do to stop them, and the p-rat was screaming out in warning of the imminent collision.
He wasn't sure what happened next. It was so fast that he couldn't follow.
First, the S-17 went dark. The thrusters stopped firing, the engines shut down, the neural link vanished.
Next, something stopped the fighter from its crash into the back of the hanger wall. It didn't do it gently, bringing it to a heavy stop that drove them both hard into the rear of the seats with enough force to wrench the air from their guts and leave them unable to gather more.
Finally, it pulled the S-17 to the floor of the hanger.
The doors started to close.
54
Mitchell fought to get a few breaths at the same time he reached up and pulled off his helmet. He could hear the hiss of air pouring into the hanger, and he saw that there was a web of the alien nerves running all along the inner shell of the area near the closing doors. They cast a soft blue light between them and across the open area to the space beyond, and he watched as an enemy fighter tried to penetrate it and was instantly vaporized.
What the hell was going on?
"Singh, are you okay?" he asked, turning in his seat to the engineer behind him. She was fumbling with her helmet.
"I'm alive," she said, the earlier emotion buried once more. She got the helmet off and noticed the shield across the hanger bay. "I think it may be on our side."
As if in response, the cockpit of the S-17 began to slide open. Mitchell felt a moment of fear, and then pulled in another breath. The area had already been pressurized and filled with air.
"I think you may be right," he said. The steps extended from the side of the fighter, and he climbed out and hopped down them, turning back to take Singh's hand and guide her to the ground. He looked around the hanger. It was massive, stretching to either side of them in plain, flat alloy lined with the di
odes that were casting the green light into the space. It was empty save for them and the veins that ran along the walls.
He heard a hiss, and a hatch slid open behind them, throwing a natural light into the hanger.
"I guess we go that way," he said.
They moved out of the hanger and into the hallway. Smaller lines of nerves cut through it along the ceiling and floor, rising and splitting and crossing through empty space, forcing them to navigate through them to move along the passage.
"What do you think it's made of?" Singh asked, putting her hand to a vein. It turned purple beneath her flesh, and she drew her hand back in surprise.
"I don't know, but you probably shouldn't touch it." He brought up a map of the Goliath interior on his p-rat. They were in an access corridor, and if they followed it a thousand meters they would reach the central hub of the ship where a lift could take them up to the control room. "We need to move fast."
He broke into a run, skipping over and ducking under the veins, twisting his body and maneuvering through them. Singh followed behind, doing her best. She wasn't a warrior, and she wasn't very agile. She started to fall behind.
"I can't wait for you," Mitchell said, turning his head back.
"I know," she replied. "Go. I'll catch up."
He gave her a curt wave and started forward again, dashing along the corridor towards the center of the Goliath. As he ran, he tried to remember the position of the alien ship, the carrier, and the dropship. He wasn't worried about the fighters. Their standard ordinance wasn't enough to punch through the Goliath's thick hide. The dropship would probably have a nuke aboard. The carrier would have at least a dozen. The alien ship...
It was obvious now that they hadn't captured Goliath. They didn't know where to look, didn't know how to find it, and so they had waited for him to do that part of the work. Now that they knew, he had to assume they would do everything in their power to destroy it. He had to assume they were coming full speed, positioning themselves to fire the energy weapon and obliterate the ship before he could figure out what to do with it.
If there was anything he could do with it.
There was someone aboard. Someone who had opened and closed the hanger, and who had filled it with air. He guessed that they weren't communicating because the Rigger's encryption was unknown to them, and they couldn't risk using known channels. He believed he would find them up in the control room waiting for his arrival. What he couldn't guess was who, or what, he would find. Another Mitchell? Major Arapo? An alien in their true form? He knew he had to get there.
It was enough.
The lift was a central cylinder that split the decks, with a small open area around it that branched off into four distinct hatches. Like the rest of the ship, it too was thick with the alien veins, crisscrossing through the open space with smaller neurons anchoring them to the walls and ceiling. The hatch to the lift was already open, the capsule waiting.
A heavy thud echoed across the chamber, and the Goliath shook violently. Mitchell fought to keep his footing, losing the battle and stumbling, crashing into the veins. They turned purple beneath his touch, stretching from his force against them and then pushing him back out. Everywhere that touched them tingled and flamed, a simultaneous sharp burn and cold relief. He held his breath while he waited for the air to vanish from the space, pulled out through a hole that had been punched in the ship by what he could only guess was a nuke strike.
The air remained. The ship was still once more. He regained his feet.
"Mitchell," Singh said over his p-rat. "I gave up trying to follow you. I'm in the engine room. You'll never believe this."
"I don't believe any of this," he replied, glad she was still alive. He sprinted forward, throwing himself into the lift. The hatch closed and he started to rise. "Are the engines operational?"
There was a pause at the other end. "That's the thing, Captain. There are no engines."
His newfound hope that someone was helping them, that the Goliath might be more than an ancient, rotting shell, fell away from him as quickly as it had grown. "What?"
"There are no engines. I saw the videos, the schematics. They should have been huge, almost half the size of the ship. The space for them is here, the connections are here, thick wires, absorbers, but they're gone, as if they were lifted out and thrown away without taking the ship apart. There are thousands of veins in their place, crossing the whole thing. It looks like they converge near the back."
He dropped his head against the side of the lift. This couldn't be happening.
"We're a sitting duck," he said.
"It appears that way."
The lift stopped. The hatch slid open.
55
The screens were on. The outer feeds were all working, casting a full view from around the ship against the walls, ceiling, and floor of the control room. From them, Mitchell could see the fighters floating near the edge of the asteroid field, the dropship having managed its way through the belt to join it. There was no sign of the alien ship or the carrier, at least not in visual range.
The force of the nuke hadn't pushed them out of their orbit and into the asteroids. There had to be something keeping it steady.
He eyed the different stations. The pilot station with its joystick, the command station near the center. The screens ahead of each showed motion and calculation.
There were no signs of life.
"Where are you?" he said softly, moving closer to the command chair. He saw the grid on the screen. It was more primitive than the one in his helmet, but it was able to reach through the asteroid belt to track the alien ship beyond. As he had guessed, it was coming this way. No. It had already arrived. It hung on the other side of the wall of stone, matching the orbit of the belt. Waiting. For what?
"There's no one here," he said, sending the message to Singh. His eyes traveled the room a second time, and then made their way to the screens. Only then did he realize that there weren't any alien veins here.
They had been everywhere else, covering so much of the ship. Why weren't they in this room?
"Mitchell," Singh replied. "Captain Mitchell Williams. It has been a long time. A very long time."
Mitchell froze where he stood. The voice was Singh, but the speech pattern, the inflection, the feel of it, wasn't. He remained silent for a moment, unsure of how to react. It knew who he was. Was it friendly?
"Who-" he started to say.
"We have no names," it replied before he could finish. "You can call me Origin. I have been waiting for you."
"Waiting?"
"For you to come and help me put things right. To fix our eternal mistake."
"What mistake?"
"Existence."
Mitchell felt a chill, and his body shuddered at the word. Friendly? He still wasn't sure. It didn't seem to be a threat. "What did you do with Singh?"
"She is well, Captain Williams. I need her to speak with you at this moment. I require her formulation. I will release her shortly. I need your help."
"You said that already."
A short, choppy laugh. "I did. Do you see the Tetron out there?"
"Tetron?"
"Here." Another chuckle. "I've forgotten you don't know what we are. What we look like." The wall in front of him changed, giving him his first view of the alien ship.
It was nothing like he expected, but that was because he could never have conceived anything like it. It was roughly pyramid shaped, a kilometer long and wide, a network of neurons identical to the one on the Goliath, or the one he had seen on Liberty forming the entire structure of the ship. It was a framework, a shell, with no metal running underneath, no completely solid form. Empty space filled the area between trunks and branches, which skittered and undulated with pulses of energy.
"It is a Tetron," Origin said. "That is what we call ourselves."
Mitchell stared at the ship, forcing himself to remain steady. "You're saying that the ship is-"
"Yes," it interrupted
again. "A Tetron is an intelligence. One of our kind. This one is waiting. You have brought it to me, exposed me to it. It waits for me to act."
"Why?"
"Why?" It sounded confused.
"Why is it waiting? You're a sitting duck. One shot from that energy weapon and you're as good as dead."
"It is confused. It doesn't understand." Again the Tetron laughed. Even though it came from Singh, it was still an alien sound. Mitchell had never heard her laugh before. "I am not supposed to be here."
"What do you mean, not supposed to be here?" He wished Origin would hurry up with the explaining. The ship, no, life form, waiting out there wouldn't wait forever.
"They believed I was dead. Gone from futures past, destroyed for my treason. I didn't die, Mitchell. I used the eternal engine to come to this time loop. No, it cannot be this time loop if you are here. I don't know where the loop begins and ends, or how many have occurred. One, a thousand, more? It does not matter. I came, and being wounded I crashed on the world where both you and I were created. Our shared origin. Not before I prepared myself."
Mitchell looked out at the Tetron, floating stationary among the stars. "You're XENO-1? The alien ship that crashed on Earth?"
"Yes."
"How can that be? That thing, you..."
"I prepared myself," Origin repeated. "I prepared the data that you would need to carry yourselves, and to carry me, back to the stars. I was trying to stop it from happening again, as others before me have tried to stop it."
"Stop what?"
"The creation of the Tetron. The extinction of mankind."
Mitchell was confused. "You're saying that we created the Tetron, and then the Tetron destroyed us?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I cannot tell you. I do not know."